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The Community Relations Service's Work in Preventing and Responding to Unfounded Racially and Religiously Motivated Violence After 9/11

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The Community Relations Service's Work in Preventing and Responding to Unfounded Racially and Religiously Motivated Violence After 9/11 Texas A&M Journal of Property Law Volume 5 Number 2 Natural Disaster Symposium Edition Article 2 June 2019 The Community Relations Service's Work in Preventing and Responding to Unfounded Racially and Religiously Motivated Violence after 9/11 Grande Lum [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarship.law.tamu.edu/journal-of-property-law Part of the Disaster Law Commons Recommended Citation Grande Lum, The Community Relations Service's Work in Preventing and Responding to Unfounded Racially and Religiously Motivated Violence after 9/11, 5 Tex. A&M J. Prop. L. 139 (2018). Available at: https://doi.org/10.37419/JPL.V5.I2.2 This Symposia Article is brought to you for free and open access by Texas A&M Law Scholarship. It has been accepted for inclusion in Texas A&M Journal of Property Law by an authorized editor of Texas A&M Law Scholarship. For more information, please contact [email protected]. \\jciprod01\productn\T\TWR\5-2\TWR202.txt unknown Seq: 1 19-MAR-19 11:18 THE COMMUNITY RELATIONS SERVICE’S WORK IN PREVENTING AND RESPONDING TO UNFOUNDED RACIALLY AND RELIGIOUSLY MOTIVATED VIOLENCE AFTER 9/111 By: Grande Lum† I. INTRODUCTION .......................................... 139 R II. COMMUNITY RELATIONS SERVICE RESPONSE TO POST 9/11 UNFOUNDED VIOLENCE ............................ 141 R III. COMMUNITY RELATIONS SERVICE POST 9/11 WORK ACROSS THE COUNTRY ................................. 147 R IV. COMMUNITY RELATIONS SERVICE WORK IN OAK CREEK GURDWARA TRAGEDY .......................... 148 R V. THE WORK GOES ON ................................... 152 R I. INTRODUCTION On the morning of September 11, 2001, New York City-based Com- munity Relations Service (“CRS”) Regional Director Reinaldo Ri- vera was at a New Jersey summit on racial profiling.2 At 8:46 a.m., an 1. A version of this article will appear as a chapter in the forthcoming Resolving Racial Conflict: The Community Relations Service and Civil Rights, 1964-2016. 2nd edition. Thanks to Nancy Rogers, Janet Martinez, Nancy Welsh, Bill Froehlich, and Josh Stulberg for their support of this article. Additional appreciation to Elisabeth Andrews for her research and editing assistance. I am also profoundly grateful to the employees of the Community Relations Service for the work they do, often without publicity or credit. † Community Project and Distinguished Practitioner in Residence at the Ohio State University Moritz College of Law. Grande Lum was nominated by President Barack Obama and confirmed by the Senate in 2012 as the Director of the Commu- nity Relations Service (CRS), an agency within the Department of Justice. Before joining CRS, Grande Lum was a clinical professor at the University of California Hastings School of the Law, where he directed the Center for Negotiation and Dis- pute Resolution. Mr. Lum previously founded the training firm Accordence, where he remains Senior Advisor. He was also Director of the Historically Underutilized Busi- ness Zone Program in the United States Small Business Administration. He authored The Negotiation Fieldbook and Tear Down the Wall: Be Your Own Mediator in Con- flict. Grande Lum received his B.A. from the University of California at Berkeley, and his J.D. from Harvard Law School. 2. The Community Relations Service is an agency within the United States De- partment of Justice created by the 1964 Civil Rights Act Title X. Per Section 1002 “It shall be the function of the (Community Relations) Service to provide assistance to communities and persons therein in resolving disputes, disagreements, or difficulties relating to discriminatory practices based on race, color, or national origin which im- pair the rights of persons in such communities under the Constitution or laws of the United States or which affect or may affect interstate commerce. The Service may offer its services in cases of such disputes, disagreements, or difficulties whenever, in its judgment, peaceful relations among the citizens of the community involved are threatened thereby, and it may offer its services either upon its own motion or upon the request of an appropriate State or local official or other interested person. For DOI: https://doi.org/10.37419/JPL.V5.I2.2 139 \\jciprod01\productn\T\TWR\5-2\TWR202.txt unknown Seq: 2 19-MAR-19 11:18 140 TEX. A&M J. PROP. L. [Vol. 5 American Airlines 767 crashed into the North Tower of New York City’s World Trade Center.3 Because Rivera was with the New Jersey state attorney general, he quickly learned of the attack. Rivera imme- diately called his staff members, who at that moment were traveling to Long Island, New York, for an unrelated case. Getting into Manhat- tan had already become difficult, so Rivera instructed his conciliators to remain on standby. At 9:03 a.m., another 767, United Airlines Flight 175, flew into the World Trade Center’s South Tower.4 September 11 initiated a new, fraught-filled era for the United States. For CRS, an agency within the United States Department of Justice, it was the beginning of a long-term immersion into conflict issues that involved discrimination and violence against those whose appearance led them to be targets of anti-terrorist hysteria or mis- placed backlash. Appropriately, in the days following 9/11, the federal government, including the Federal Bureau of Investigation (“FBI”), concentrated on ferreting out the culprits of the heinous acts. How- ever, the FBI discovered that Middle Eastern terrorists were responsi- ble for the tragedies, and communities around the nation saw a surge of violence against people who appeared to be of Middle Eastern de- scent, requiring a response to protect those who were unfairly targeted.5 These outbreaks began as soon as September 12. Police in Illinois stopped 300 people from marching on a Chicago-area mosque.6 In Gary, Indiana, a masked gunman shot twenty-one times at a Yemeni- American gas station attendant.7 In Texas, a mosque was hit by six additional background on CRS, see Community Relations Service, U.S. Dep’t Just., https://www.justice.gov/crs [https://perma.cc/KSM4-67XL] (last visited Feb. 12, 2019). See also Jeff Linkous, NJ Kicks Off Summit on Racial Profiling, TRENTONIAN (Sept. 11, 2001), https://www.trentonian.com/news/nj-kicks-off-summit-on-racial-profiling/ar ticle_2ea9eee3-492b-5e78-9a43-b3608e5745fc.html [https://perma.cc/D85B-QNXN]; Reinaldo Rivera Jr., http://www.national-consortium.org/~/media/Microsites/Files/Na tional%20Consortium/ Conferences/2015/Bios/Reinaldo%20Rivera%20Jr%20bio .ashx [https://perma.cc/GC9R-MA3J] (last visited Oct. 10, 2018). 3. 9/11 Timeline, HISTORY, https://www.history.com/topics/21st-century/9-11-time line [https://perma.cc/M2RP-EJLC] (last updated Sept. 11, 2018). 4. Id. 5. Aliyah Frumin & Amanda Sakuma, Hope and Despair: Being Muslim in America After 9/11, NBC NEWS (Sept. 11, 2016, 9:07 AM), https://www.nbcnews.com/ storyline/9-11-anniversary/hope-despair-being-muslim-america-after-9-11-n645451 [https://perma.cc/2Y7E-ZWVD]. See also Lena Kampf & Indra Sen, History Does Not Repeat Itself, But Ignorance Does: Post-9/11 Treatment of Muslims and the Liberty- Security Dilemma, HUMANITY IN ACTION, https://www.humanityinaction.org/knowl edgebase/168-history-does-not-repeat-itself-but-ignorance-does-post-9-11-treatment- of-muslims-and-the-liberty-security-dilemma [https://perma.cc/4B6B-HFNP] (last vis- ited Oct. 10, 2018). 6. Chris Wragge, Tenn. Church, Islamic Center Embrace Post 9/11, CBS NEWS (Sept. 8, 2011, 12:41 PM), https://www.cbsnews.com/news/tenn-church-islamic-center- embrace-post-9-11/ [https://perma.cc/RRY2-MGAL]. 7. Id. \\jciprod01\productn\T\TWR\5-2\TWR202.txt unknown Seq: 3 19-MAR-19 11:18 2019] RACIALLY AND RELIGIOUSLY MOTIVATED VIOLENCE 141 bullets.8 On September 15, a man who had been reported by an Ap- plebee’s waiter as saying that he wanted to “shoot some rag heads” shot a Chevron gas station owner Balbir Singh Sodhi, a Sikh-Ameri- can.9 The man, Frank Roque, shot through his car window, and five bullets hit Sodhi, killing him instantly. Roque drove to a home he pre- viously owned and had sold to an Afghan-American couple and fired on it. He then shot a Lebanese-American man. According to a police report, Roque said in reference to the 9/11 tragedy, “I [cannot] take this anymore. They killed my brothers and sisters.”10 II. COMMUNITY RELATIONS SERVICE RESPONSE TO POST 9/11 UNFOUNDED RACIALLY MOTIVATED VIOLENCE Due to CRS’s unique jurisdiction to resolve community tensions re- lating to discriminatory practices based on race, color, or national ori- gin, CRS was one of the few federal government agencies in the immediate aftermath of 9/11 reaching out to the nation’s Arab, Mus- lim, and Sikh communities.11 As Rivera described in an interview in October 2001, “As quickly as [the attack] was linked to Middle East- ern terrorists, we wanted to avoid creating a tremendous backlash against other people who were Middle Eastern or appeared to be Middle Eastern, which included South-Asian and Sikh populations.”12 From 2001 to 2016, CRS addressed a growing number of incidents in first responder fashion, provided preventative measures to reduce hate crimes, and undertook national initiatives to better confront these issues.13 CRS quickly mobilized following the terrorist attacks to assess com- munity racial and ethnic tensions in areas of the country with high concentrations of Arab, Muslim, and South Asian populations.14 CRS 8. Id. 9. Valarie Kaur, His Brother Was Murdered for Wearing a Turban After 9/11. 15 Years Later, He Spoke to the Killer, PRI (Sept. 23, 2016, 12:00 PM), https://www.pri .org/stories/2016-09-23/his-brother-was-murdered-wearing-turban-after-911-last- week-he-spoke-killer [https://perma.cc/7Z4L-PGVW].
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